


eyrie; skylight

by pinkfen



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Cute Ending, Falling In Love, Fluff, Found Family Vibes, Friendship/Love, Guardian Angels, M/M, Magical Realism, Mortals, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, doyoung is jungwoo's angel, there's almost as much dowoo as johnmark, this is just really pure and soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-13 06:00:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28648692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkfen/pseuds/pinkfen
Summary: In which Johnny is Mark’s (guardian) angel and Mark is Johnny’s mortal.
Relationships: Kim Dongyoung | Doyoung/Kim Jungwoo, Kim Jungwoo/Mark Lee (NCT), Mark Lee/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 8
Kudos: 79





	eyrie; skylight

**Author's Note:**

> This is a rework of my [gotchick] 2016 got7 oneshot of the same title. I felt johnmark fit right into it and I think you’ll agree with me if you read it haha. I really want to thank all the readers who enjoyed ’hurry back home’ and hope you like this one as well.
> 
> Do note before reading that there are brief mentions of the topic of death in this fic due to the guardian angel aspect. Otherwise it's a p soft and cute getting together fic which I think will make you happy!

“Who are you?" was the first question Johnny croaked out when he blinked open his eyes to see an ethereal, dewdrop-shape-eyed boy haloed by pristine, blinding white light.

"Doyoung," had been the serene reply in a hypnotically deep voice.

"Where am I?" Johnny groggily demanded next, looking around him in a bewildered daze as he took in a room whose walls seemed to be entirely constructed of clouds.

"Dead," came the equally calm answer.

*

It had taken hours for the horrified shrieking to make his voice go hoarse, then disappear; days for the unstoppable keening from his agonized lips to subside. The details were boring, typical. He acted just like any other human being would act in the situation — unable to accept, to believe he was dead.

In the end, like everyone else — like Doyoung himself — he had no choice.

He was lucky, he knew, in some twisted way, that Doyoung was there when he opened his eyes like a newborn chick; in those first terrifying and nightmarish days when he had no idea how he had gotten to this impossible place; how he died.

Doyoung had been alone when he went through it, and though he didn't say anything about his experience Johnny could tell from the way he shuddered that it hadn't been pretty.

Still, there were some things neither of them knew yet.

Like how he died, for example. His mind was a frustrating, painful blank when he tried to rack his brains for his final moments on earth.

And where they were.

And what they were doing there; how long they would be there; or what they had to do.

He was just relieved when he opened his eyes daily, his held breath only resuming when he saw Doyoung slumbering peacefully on a fluffy cloud mattress next to him, sweet face naturally angelic in repose.

Doyoung who walked him through the steps, talked him soothingly and kindly back into a semblance of sanity for those first few nerve-wracking days. Who had, with his trademark unshakable simplicity, placed his hands on Johnny's shaking shoulders and asked him to stop wailing and look into his eyes, for a moment.

Johnny obeyed, falling silent, opening his eyes wide and gazing straight into Doyoung's crystalline, honest ones. They were like transparent mirrors, like the surface of a clear, ripple-less lake, and in them Johnny saw himself. He gasped to see himself completely different from how he remembered his appearance, transformed almost unrecognizably into a vision of pure white like Doyoung.

Needless to say, he looked far, far more angelic than he felt.

*

Slowly and patiently, Doyoung taught him everything he knew about this place and their existence, imparting all his knowledge to Johnny without holding back. He nurtured Johnny like his own hyung, even though Johnny was technically older and felt a fierce protective urge for fragile, susceptible Doyoung.

It was only fitting that Doyoung's mortal was as wispy, as unearthly beautiful as him, Johnny thought. The concept of mortals was introduced to him by Doyoung in his second week in this — cloud-castle.

He had instructed Johnny to peer through an opening he hadn't noticed on the floor of the cloud, which they were able to stand on (it felt like walking on eiderdown, weightless and untethered), prising the small hole further apart with his bare hands to allow Johnny a clearer view.

Johnny watched in hushed, spellbound silence — although he didn't need to be quiet, because humans couldn't hear them — the boy who Doyoung told him softly was his mortal.

His name was Jungwoo, and he was Korean-Canadian. Doyoung reluctantly admitted that even after his months (a guesstimate, they had no real way of keeping track of the passage of time) in this simulacrum of heaven, he had no idea why Jungwoo had been assigned to him as his mortal. He had merely found the hole at the bottom of the cloud one day by chance, and started spending more and more time as if by an invisible magnetic attraction watching the young man named Jungwoo and the events and going-ons of his banal, human life on earth. Simply because he had nothing else to do.

The rest, he had deduced. Johnny was starting to learn that Doyoung was extraordinarily intelligent, and grudgingly admitted to himself that he was lucky to be trapped with him here, in this cell high up in the sky, where only blue stretched out as far as the eye could see.

Doyoung shared with him, eyes glinting with an almost human excitement that most people got when they acquired an amazing ability, or a marvellous secret, that he could control some of the things that happened to Jungwoo.

To be more precise, he could shield Jungwoo from some things, protect him when he sensed danger approaching. Many times, he bragged to Johnny with a proud smile, he had saved Jungwoo's life, like a knight in shining armour.

A pity, he murmured in a smaller voice, his expressive face promptly falling, that Jungwoo would probably never know who he was, or that he existed in this world.

After all, he didn't exist in Jungwoo's world anymore. Neither of them did.

*

When Johnny enquired politely and respectfully if Doyoung ever met Jungwoo in his human life, Doyoung frowned in a way that made it obvious he had pondered this exact question for long hours himself.

"No," he said quietly, with a melancholy shake of his head. "At least, I don't remember. But I feel like if I had, I would."

"Don't you think so?" he raised his head and met Johnny's eyes, hopefully.

Johnny nodded earnestly. It wasn't so much that Jungwoo was the kind of gorgeous most people would find hard to forget. It was something deeper, more mysterious, a kind of bond he could sense between Jungwoo and Doyoung, even though Doyoung never verbally expressed or alluded to it. It was so strong and transcendent, he could physically feel it from the quiet fondness and affection with which Doyoung gazed at Jungwoo, never growing bored or impatient even for hours on end; the way his eyes grew starry and clouded with sadness as he longingly watched Jungwoo do stupid and very human things and Johnny could see how much he wished he was back in the mortal world, doing them with him.

Thus, it was an unsolvable mystery why Doyoung had been "assigned" Jungwoo (and by who, for that matter). And what Doyoung was supposed to do for him, for how long. But all Johnny knew with crystal clarity was that if Doyoung had never passed away, he would never have met Jungwoo or knew of his existence. They lived in two different countries; their paths never destined to cross.

And he found his eyes blurring when Doyoung confided in him, voice broken like glass shards, that sometimes, just sometimes, he even felt happy he died — simply because it led him to meet Jungwoo. That meeting Jungwoo made it all worth it.

It was crazy, senseless. But love was. And Doyoung loved Jungwoo with everything he had in him.

*

Sometime along the way, as the weeks slipped past in a hazy blur, then months, Johnny started feeling jealous.

He envied the incandescent glow of Doyoung's eyes, singlehandedly illuminating the night sky like little tea lights as he sighed contentedly watching Jungwoo smile in his sleep, lying awake late into their own night. He was indescribably and absurdly jealous of how unbelievably, miraculously, Doyoung had managed to find happiness in this ivory tower in the sky they were both trapped in, without any rhyme or reason or purpose.

Doyoung had found his purpose. And Johnny was growing more and more impatient to find his own.

They didn't have jobs or school here, high up in the sky, above the airplanes and stars and even the sun. All he had was Doyoung's company, which was pitiably meager since he spent most of his time gazing out of his cloud window, till his back ached and his joints protested but he still didn't budge. All they had was time, vast expanses of it, abundant beyond measure.

They didn't have anything to amuse themselves with, no computers or TVs or music or books. Only the sound of each other's voices, and the cacophony of their thoughts, seeking direction and enlightenment.

It was enough boredom to drive one to distraction. So naturally, Johnny spent a big part of his day crawling around the floor of their immense cloud raft, searching tirelessly for his own hole in the ground. The texture of the cloud was so fluffy that he sank down to his elbow and thigh-level every time he inched forward on his hands and knees, but he never gave up.

Even if he was unable to remember the reason for his death, he was determined to search for the reason for his afterlife.

Jungwoo grew a year older, then two. Doyoung remained nineteen. Eternally nineteen.

And Johnny stayed twenty-one.

When Jungwoo was the same age as him, Johnny finally found his mortal.

*

He had stumbled across the slight spiderweb crack in the cloud floor, unnoticeable by eyes any less sharper and desperate than Johnny's. His heart missed a lurching beat initially, then sank in disappointment. At first, he thought he had found his window. But when he saw Jungwoo entering the scene from the right, he realised that it was probably another glimpse of Doyoung's mortal's world.

Doyoung hadn't mentioned to him more than one window, and had spent the last two years glued to the only one Johnny knew of, but he must have forgotten to bring up this information.

Johnny slumped down in defeat, lying with his face pressed to the hole like a child against a shop window, when his heart stopped the second time.

Because Jungwoo was still in the scene, which he had realised looked like an empty lecture hall in a university, students filtering out after class. It was the university Jungwoo entered at the beginning of the year, and Johnny had heard Doyoung wax lyrical with maternal pride about countless times.

But this time, Johnny's eyes were irresistibly drawn by a boy sitting next to him — a boy Johnny couldn't remember ever seeing before in his mortal life but who looked hauntingly, heart-stoppingly familiar.

"Doyoung.” His voice came out as a harsh cry, jagged and breathless.

In an instant, Doyoung was by his side, his body pressing without human temperature or heat against Johnny's side, his face glued to the small hole Johnny had prised open with shaking but careful hands till it was almost the size of Doyoung's.

"Oh my god," Doyoung breathed. He never swore casually, because they were in too precarious a position to take God's name in vain, but Johnny could tell he was truly shocked and excited for him.

"Is that him?" Doyoung whispered, echoing the thoughts racing through his mind he was unable to vocalize, in case this would all shatter like bubbles of sea foam, like a mirage in the desert or vapour trails in the sky.

But Doyoung pointed with a steady and overjoyed finger out of the hole, his arm immediately turning the silvery translucent any part of their body did if they tried sticking it out. It was an effect eerie enough to prevent them from venturing further or trying to throw themselves off the edges of the cloud in the past two years. Besides, now that they had each other, as Doyoung said grimly, they weren't going anywhere till they found out what was going on.

Johnny didn't realise tears were running down his cheeks until Doyoung turned to him, eyes softening instantly, and reached a gentle thumb to wipe them away. He didn't even know he was still able to cry, but the reason he hadn't felt them flowing down his cheeks was that he no longer had any sensations, whether of dampness or warmth.

But apparently, he still had the ability to feel sadness.

Honestly, sometimes it felt like the only sensation he was able to feel in this cut-off, detached otherworld.

*

”Hyung,” Doyoung sobbed with emotion, hugging him. "Congratulations."

He was lucky, Johnny thought with a lump in his throat as he continued peering through the hole like an addict all night, and the next day too, his hands growing numb from stretching it as far as it could go but his lifeless heart steadily seeming to expand and grow infinitesimally warmer — so lucky he had Doyoung by his side in this lonely fortress, reminding Johnny of what it felt like so very long ago now, to be human.

*

It didn't take Johnny long to satisfy his avid and ravenous curiosity. The boy's — his mortal's — name was Mark. Mark Lee Minhyung, one of Jungwoo's new lowerclassmen in his major at university.

Mark was perfect. He was everything Johnny had dreamed of in a mortal, and more.

It seemed like such an ironic twist of fate that Doyoung and Johnny's mortals ended up meeting each other, but neither of them felt genuinely surprised. It felt like happenstance, like serendipity, that somehow their invisible but strong bond above had led their mortals, as if by the red string of fate, to encounter and befriend each other, providing each other the strength Johnny and Doyoung couldn't provide them visibly and physically.

Johnny knew Doyoung wished as fervently and heartily as himself that Jungwoo and Mark would grow as close as the two of them were, and watched their blossoming friendship like proud parents surveying their children forging best friendships at preschool.

But most of the time, Johnny still found himself spending most of his time privately, just whiling away the hours watching Mark working at some mundane task like using the internet or taking the subway to and from school, slacking off in class and goofing off after. Eating, sleeping and jerking off. Dreaming and smiling and laughing — and sometimes, very rarely (thankfully because these always felt like daggers piercing Johnny's ribs) crying, alone or feeling tired.

At these times, all Johnny wished was to magically transform himself into a wave of energy that could sweep over Mark, bringing him back to life, to his usual hyperactive and lively self that was Johnny's only source of laughter up here. But no matter how many ways he could turn himself into energy for fleeting instants to inspire Mark, this was something he was frustratingly unable to do. All he wanted was to let Mark know that no matter how alone he felt, he was never alone. Ever. Because Johnny was always watching him from above, all-seeing, all-forgiving and all-encompassing.

It sounded creepy, being watched like that, but Johnny had the inexplicable feeling Mark wouldn't mind. He let his mind wonder occasionally, to the what-ifs and maybes, fantasies and illusions. What if he had met Mark in the mortal world, before he passed on? Would Mark have liked him, as much as Johnny liked him? Would they have become friends?

Would he have found Johnny as loveable as Johnny found him?

It was tricky, because it was only when Johnny found Mark that he realised that their kind of love — Doyoung's and Johnny's — was slightly different from romantic love. It was something beyond definition, that rarely existed in the mortal world. It was immortal love, something he only found himself capable of in this afterlife.

Soulmates, Johnny found himself thinking. It wasn't exactly accurate, mostly because Mark didn't have a clue of his existence, but it was the closest word to describe the way Johnny felt for him.

*

Even though he never met Mark in his life, Johnny found him unsettlingly and comfortingly familiar at the same time, like a lullaby from childhood he had lost and found again. He swiftly acquired a vast wealth of information about every aspect of Mark's life and his history from birth till the present, and devoured this knowledge as voraciously as if it were oxygen. He made it his mission to find out everything about Mark, and found this voyage of discovery fascinating. Thus, knowing Mark so well, it was effortless to predict his every next move, to hold him back from taking the wrong steps but also allowing him to make the mistakes he had to learn and grow.

Johnny was surprised to find he enjoyed being an angel. It was never a vocation he would have expected himself to find pleasure in, or even be skilful at, but he blushed with pride whenever Doyoung warmly complimented him on what a good job he was doing with Mark, and how Mark was sunny and unshadowed and full of life and love in a way very few mortals were.

(Privately, Johnny felt that it had much more to do with Mark's inborn and own personality than his care or guidance. In fact, occasionally he felt he was learning more from Mark than Mark was from him, that he was unworthy of being the angel of a person as brilliant and dazzling as Mark.)

Then, somehow, Mark would stop his nonexistent heart by doing something utterly and wholly unexpected and breathtaking like closing his eyes on the last moment before he tipped into sleep at night, and saying quietly, in his head, _Thank you_. As if he knew that Johnny was there, watching over him; as if he could sense Johnny's existence, even when Johnny didn't exist.

Just those two words made everything Johnny painstakingly went through to pave Mark's road totally and completely worth it.

*

Gradually, they developed a routine. They would spend all day — from the moment they woke till the moment the air around them darkened to a starless black — watching their mortals through the portals, because that was all they wanted to do.

But when the sun set, Doyoung and Johnny would tear themselves away with reluctance and join each other, spending alone time together. They were careful to devote time to nurturing their friendship and giving each other warmth and companionship as well.

If they had the desire to eat or any appetites for food, they would have had dinner together, maybe having a barbeque with good meat under the open night sky. But since they didn't, they contented themselves with talking and laughing together till they grew tired and fell asleep next to each other.

And one morning Johnny woke up and realised he had nothing to want for. In spite of everything, in spite of the fact that they still had no idea where this place was and what they were here for, in spite of the fact that Jungwoo and Mark didn't know them and would probably never know them — Johnny and Doyoung were happy. In this private, secular universe with just the four of them, they had managed to find happiness in each other.

And that, Johnny thought, was a greater miracle than the fact he had landed in this bizarre temporum without rhyme or reason after he departed the earthly world.

*

So, together, they continued watching silently over Jungwoo and Mark. Sometimes they switched windows, just for fun. And sometimes they got upset with their own mortals and the other had to cajole and persuade them to forgive the poor boys because they were mere humans, with their beautiful flaws and imperfections. And sometimes they got uselessly angry and devastated at the thought that Jungwoo and Mark would never see them, or know how much Johnny and Doyoung loved them. That they would never know how worthy they were of such love.

They watched Jungwoo and Mark's friendship blossom tentatively, then grow into something steady and strong and lasting. They teared up, then got embarrassed, when Jungwoo and Mark were the pillars of support for each other they themselves could never be. With bated breaths, they watched Jungwoo and Mark fall in awkward and clumsy crushes with each other, then realise their mutual feelings. They watched them fall out of friendship and into love — then out of love and back into a more fraught and hesitant friendship.

They watched them fall down and get up, fail and succeed, overcome obstacles that only made them into stronger and better people. Johnny and Doyoung watched Jungwoo and Mark grow into adults who made them so proud they were bursting with it, into people filled with love and the ability to share it.

*

The years passed. Jungwoo and Mark dated various girls and had a string of girlfriends, and made other close friends like Taeil and Taeyong and Lucas, but never fell out of their best-friendship.

The year Jungwoo turned twenty-seven and Mark twenty-six, Johnny and Doyoung still remained twenty-one and nineteen. But despite their outward and stagnated ages, they felt like they had grown immeasurably as well, just by being beside each other and their amazing, unbelievably humane mortals.

*

One unremarkable, dateless morning, Johnny woke up, as usual, and just like that, Doyoung had grown wings.

He seemed to have sprouted them overnight, in his sleep, without any pain or memory. With tears brimming in his eyes and overflowing with desperation and fear and the exhilaration of freedom, Doyoung asked him, his hands running compulsively over the feathery, beating downy appendages in wonder: "What's going to happen next?”

"I don't want to leave you," Johnny heard a frightened, childlike voice saying, cracking on the last word, and at first he thought it was Doyoung but then Doyoung reached out and drew him into his arms warmly and Johnny realised with a start that it was him.

"I don't want you to leave," Johnny was crying, like a lost abandoned child, the way he had on the first day he had woken up in this strange, twisted heaven and Doyoung had been looming over him like he was Johnny's personal guardian angel instead of Jungwoo's; and in many ways, Johnny thought that he was.

Jungwoo hadn't known Doyoung, so he didn't have to bear the pain of saying goodbye — but how could anyone, in this world or the other, possibly endure the agony of bidding farewell to Doyoung, when they had known his softness, his tenderness and compassion?

Doyoung was a true angel, Johnny realised, in all the ways Johnny would never be. He was everything an angel was supposed to be — unselfish, selfless and self-sacrificing. He saved Jungwoo and he had saved Johnny too, and Johnny hadn't known how much he needed an angel till it was too late and Doyoung was deserting him.

*

”Oh, Johnny,” Doyoung whispered hoarsely, dropping the hyung, his voice filled with so much warmth and affection and love that Johnny only cried harder. Doyoung suddenly seemed so much more mature, older and wiser and more lofty. Did it come with the wings, Johnny wondered? But it was clear Doyoung had finally found his inner peace.

"It hurts to leave you too, my favourite hyung,” Doyoung continued in that hypnotically calming voice, like molten sunshine and falling rain. "But trust me, it's only a matter of time before we'll be together again. And when that time comes, it will be forever. You just have to be patient. And did you forget that you still have Mark? What will he do without you? We both know how hopeless he is, what a bumbling klutz..."

Doyoung's voice had regained a bit of its old teasing note, and Johnny snorted a half-hearted but still unbearably sad laugh.

"Why can't you stay here? With me? A little longer..." he whined, sounding more and more like Doyoung's child.

"I don't know, John," Doyoung replied evenly, with the same placid tranquility he calmed Johnny down with the day he arrived above the clouds. Unconsciously, Johnny had grown to love their cloud-home, where they spent long languid hours just observing Jungwoo and Mark and gossiping about them and laughing about them and worrying about them and aching about them, but mostly loving them.

"But," Doyoung continued, his eyes growing more and more distant, as if he had already left, "if we hadn't come here, we wouldn't have met Jungwoo and Mark and each other. We wouldn't have known this happiness."

"Were you happy? With me? Are you happy now?" Johnny was grasping at straws, tugging at Doyoung's clothing urgently as if he could keep him here just by sheer brute force.

Doyoung nodded and smiled at him radiantly, a smile filled with sympathy and acceptance.

"I was so happy because of you. Before you came, I hated this place; but for the past years, I felt so lucky to be stuck here with you. Thank you for everything."

Johnny heard a sob catch in his own throat. "What about Jungwoo? What will that fool do without you?" Johnny quoted a line Doyoung often used in tender exasperation, and saw the unmistakable flicker of sadness in Doyoung's eyes.

"I can't bear to leave either of you,” Doyoung said with aching softness. "But sometimes we have no choice but to say goodbye. And I'm sure — absolutely certain Jungwoo will be just fine without me, on his own. Just like you."

Johnny had nothing else to say or add. Because Doyoung had made himself clear. He wanted to leave. And because Johnny loved him, he had to let go.

Because if Mark had taught Johnny what love was, then Doyoung was the one who taught him how to love without expecting anything in return.

*

An innumerable and uncountable number of dreadfully lonely nights later, Johnny found himself dreaming, for the first time since he had ascended to this castle in the sky.

*

When he awoke, he didn't dare to open his eyes for a moment, feeling sure that when he did, he would find wings billowing from his back, magnificent and ready for flight to wherever Doyoung was.

But he found something better. Much, much unimaginably better.

Because what he saw was Mark, curled up like a miracle in bright white, sleeping peacefully next to him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much if you took the time to read till the end, I hope you enjoyed and a kudos would mean a lot to me :) if you haven’t read my other johnmark fics, do check them out! I have two posted on this account and one on gotchick @ ao3.
> 
> This is a message to cobalamincosel @ ao3: I actually wanted to dedicate this fic to you bc since I posted my first fic for this pairing in august last year, you’ve left me multiple encouraging warm and lovely comments, and you do the same for practically everyone in the johnmark tag. Thank you for being you and idk if you’ll ever see this but if you do, I hope you know what a wonderful person you are and how many people like me you’ve touched. I didnt dare to gift the fic to you in the end bc I didnt feel worthy of gifting anything to someone as great as you, and didnt want you to feel pressured to read it, but if you ever do and find this note, just know I had the intention to haha :”) [and im sure many other people are like me and want to express their gratitude and admiration for you but feel unworthy so im doing this for all of us lol]


End file.
